Re: [Plplot-devel] I believe it is time to drop Python Numeric support

[Andrew R. <and...@us...>]

Alan,

I agree now would be a good time to drop this. It has been deprecated for a 
long time now.

Andrew

On Thursday 02 May 2013 09:34:42 Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> Hi Andrew:
> 
> Here is what we currently say in our release notes concerning
> the Numeric/numpy question.
> 
> "(5.9.6) We have deprecated support for the python Numeric array
> extensions. Numeric is no longer maintained and users of Numeric are
> advised to migrate to numpy. Numpy has been the standard for PLplot
> for some time. If numpy is not present PLplot will now disable python
> by default. If you still require Numeric support in the short term
> then set USE_NUMERIC to ON in cmake. The PLplot support for Numeric
> will be dropped in a future release."
> 
> (Note, USE_NUMERIC no longer exists, but we still provide a
> largely equivalent FORCE_NUMERIC option with a deprecation message
> concerning that if the user turns it ON.)
> 
> If we continue providing a FORCE_NUMERIC user option, that means there
> is a PLplot maintenance issue now since Debian wheezy (and presumably
> most other modern Linux distros) no longer carries Numeric (last
> released in 2005) so it is difficult/impossible to test any changes in
> our Numeric support.
> 
> For example, (which motivated this post to plplot-devel) while
> propagating the plshade* API changes to Python, I found myself with
> the unpleasant choice of either changing
> bindings/python/plplot.py.Numeric with absolutely no way of testing my
> changes even for syntax errors or else leaving it alone which means it
> won't work with the recent plshade* API changes if anybody ever tries
> it since there is a lot of type checking going on with the arguments
> to plshade*.  (I opted to leave it alone.)
> 
> Do you agree with me that it is now time to drop PLplot's support of
> Numeric? If so, I would be willing to do that (by forcing
> FORCE_NUMERIC to always be OFF rather than providing that as a user
> option) and make an additional announcement about dropping support for
> Numeric in the release notes.
> 
> Alan
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
> 
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
> 
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
> implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
> Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
> software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
> (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
> and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
> 
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -- Introducing AppDynamics Lite, a free troubleshooting tool for Java/.NET
> Get 100% visibility into your production application - at no cost.
> Code-level diagnostics for performance bottlenecks with <2% overhead
> Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes.
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap1
> _______________________________________________
> Plplot-devel mailing list
> Plp...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel